


Five Things Yuri Plisetsky Loves Very Loudly (and a quiet one who loves him back)

by Rosie_Rues



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-25 20:12:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10771590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosie_Rues/pseuds/Rosie_Rues
Summary: Yuri and his passions. Eventual slash, once they've grown up a little more.





	1. Cats (the bigger the better)

The Worlds are a shitshow from the moment they touch down in Helsinki. By the time they’ve got to the hotel, there have been three floods of tears (none of them involving Yuri), six screaming matches (three of them involving Yuri) and twelve threats of slow and painful death (all of them from Yuri—he’s disappointed in his team mates). Yakov’s snarling, Mila’s at her most obnoxious, Georgi’s emoting, Katsuki’s fled the rest of them and is probably lying down in a room somewhere with a paper bag over his head for all the fuck Yuri knows, and Victor’s gone over the far edge of manic (which is in theory better than the old Victor who took pre-competition lonely aloofness to an art form, but really fucking annoying when it’s happening less than two feet from your head). Lilia sees them as far as the hotel and then absents herself pointedly in search of tea and civilised surroundings. 

Otabek shows up just as Victor decides to counsel Georgi with dating advice. Why the fuck Victor thinks he is any position to issue advice after the clusterfuck of the last eighteen months escapes Yuri, but it goes about as well as would be expected, which is to say the fourth flood of tears is imminent—hard fucking luck that they all ran out of tissues mid-flight.

“Otabek!” Mila squeals and Yuri jumps about six inches.

And there he is, standing just inside the door with a line between his eyes, looking straight at Yuri.

“Otabek!” Victor carols, throwing out his arms and starting to swoop in.

Well, Victor can just fuck off, because Otabek is  _his friend_ and Yuri is not sharing. He leaps ahead of Victor, grabs Otabek’s sleeve and tows him right out of the hotel. They’re halfway down the road before Yuri stops for breath.

“Hi,” says Otabek, looking like Otabek always does.

“Hi,” Yuri mutters, suddenly abashed, His conversations with Otabek for the last few months have all been online. They’re been in contact at least once a day, through Instagram, messages, a few Skype calls, but this is the first time he’s actually seen Otabek since the Grand Prix Final and he’s kind of taken aback by the very thereness of him.

“Come with me?” Otabek asks and okay, yeah, Yuri can do this. He can scramble onto the back of Otabek’s bike and hold on tight, and it’s better now, because he’s spent hours messaging back and forth about engine specs and winter driving conditions, so he understands why Otabek is driving differently here than he did in Barcelona.

And the further they get from the hotel, the more he relaxes, because this is  _Otabek,_ who manages to make quiet meaningful rather than boring, who sends Yuri playlists of music which he doesn’t think he’ll like until the beat gets into his blood, and who tweets once a month, if that, but always with something perfectly crafted, and who not only found the best music for Yuri to skate to but gave him the routine to go with it, handing over his own fucking exhibition piece with nothing more than a duck of his head and a quiet, pleased smile. This is Otabek, whose shoulders are broad and whose hands are steady as he directs them along long roads out of the bustle of the city centre.

He’s expecting Otabek to take them to some cafe where they can talk away from the irritations of other skaters. Instead, they end up at the zoo. 

It’s on an island, and when they stop, Otabek turns to him and says, a little apologetically, “The ferry doesn’t run in winter, so we had to use the causeway.”

Yuri had been about to inform him that zoos are for little kids, but the words die in his throat. Instead, he scuffs his foot against the slushy snow at the edge of the car park and mutters, “I don’t mind.”

“They have a tiger,” Otabek tells him, as if he’s heard what Yuri’s not saying.

Yuri looks up, intrigued. “Really?”

“Really.”

In fact, this zoo has more than one tiger. Yuri plasters himself to the glass where the female tiger is sleeping and coos at her happily, before dragging Otabek round the side to watch the three babies play in the snow, like the biggest, meanest, most adorable kittens in the entire world. And then there’s the snow leopard cubs and the lions and the lynx who stares at Yuri with a sneer he immediately tries to copy, and the whole thing is basically the most awesome zoo in the history of forever. Yuri takes many, many pictures, babbles at Otabek about the extreme awesomeness of every animal, and even manages to harangue Otabek into a joint selfie in front of the peacock ( **yuri-plisetsky:** Photobombed by **@v-nikiforov** , again  **@otabek-altin** ). It’s the best afternoon and Otabek is the _best_ best friend ever.

The only thing that puts a shadow on it is the inevitable appearance of the real Victor and his keeper.

“It wasn’t a fucking invitation,” Yuri mutters at them.

Victor descends on them. “But Yurio, we were worried for you. No one knew where you’d gone!”

Katsuki clears his throat and adds apologetically, “Yakov did say you had to start taking a responsible adult with you when you ran off.”

“And you brought  _him?_ ” Yuri demands as Victor spies the monkeys and goes wide-eyed, probably in delight at finally discovering his intellectual equals.

Otabek says, low and a little unhappy, “I’m an adult.”

Victor gives him the kind of smile which always makes Yuri want to smack him, and says, “Well, yes, but you’re also the one who keeps kidnapping him.”

“Oh,” says Otabek and the line between his brows deepens. 

Yuri glares at the idiots, because they are not allowed to come and ruin his afternoon and make Otabek sad, because no one gets to do that, not on his watch.

“Sorry,” Katsuki says, looking anxious. “Um, we’ll just be in the cafe. Don’t leave without us.”

“Yuuuuuuuuri! Look at the little goats!”

“Or maybe not,” Katsuki says and he’s clearly about three breaths away from wringing his hands. “Um.”

Yuri relents. “We’ll find you. Once you’re done with the stupid goats, go and look at the tigers, piggy. They’re awesome and you can feed Victor to them and no one will ever know!”

“I think Yakov might be a little upset with me,” Katsuki says, very seriously. 

“Yuuri,” Victor says, wrapping himself around Katsuki’s neck. On second thoughts, he is clearly not a monkey. He’s a fucking sloth. “You would save me from being eaten from tigers, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, yes,” Katsuki says earnestly, because he clearly has no willpower whatsoever.

“Aaargh!” Yuri says.

Otabek clears his throat and suggests, not looking at any of them, “Wild boar?”

So they leave Victor to commune with the mountain goats and go to see the wild boar. They remind Yuri of Yakov, all bristly and bad-tempered. 

“Perhaps they wouldn’t look so cross if you didn’t keep calling them ‘sausages,’” Otabek says. He’s smiling at Yuri, though, that quiet little smile which lets Yuri know he has a friend.

Yuri has a friend.

Shrugging into his scarf to hide the way that thought always makes him grin, he says, “It’s not like they speak Russian.”

“How do you know that?” Otabek asks, and lets Yuri expostulate at him for the next ten minutes.

A few hours and many photos later, they make it back to their hotel, where Otabek apologises to Yakov even as Yuri tries to shout over the top of him. By the time they get back, Georgi and Mila have both calmed down, and Mila has also liked a few of his photos. They all end up in the hotel bar with Phichit and some squeaky little Japanese skater who seems to worship the ground Katsuki walks on (it takes all sorts to make up a world, people keep telling Yuri, but why does he have to keep meeting the really weird sorts?). 

It’s all a pretty good start to the competition until the next day, when fucking JJ decides to take the piss out of them. He starts off with comments about being stuck babysitting, but Victor is busy alternating between dancing up and down the hallway and hugging the nerves out of his fiance. So JJ switches his attention to Yuri, who honestly tries to ignore him, but JJ is such a shithead, and Yuri’s going to skate across his fucking jugular if he doesn’t shut the fuck up.

“So, Otabek,” JJ goes, because he can’t leave anyone alone if he knows they’re better than him, which basically means everyone else in the final group, “it was good of you to take little Yuri to the zoo for the day. Did you have to buy him ice cream too?”

Otabek gives him a blank, flat look and says, “Ice cream is not on our diet plan. We’ll have some later.”

“Later?” JJ asks.

Otabek shrugs slightly. “After we beat you.”

It’s subtle enough that it could just be a translation issue, but Yuri knows better by now, especially when Otabek then tilts his head and says, “Yakov’s here.  Davai , Yuri.”

Lilia tells him later that he deserved to have marks deducted for the manic grin fixed on his face all the way through his short program. Yuri doesn’t care, because he’s just discovered that Otabek Altin knows how to fucking  _trash talk_ .

And that’s almost as cool as the baby snow leopards. 


	2. Grandpa (even when he doesn't understand)

Yuri’s Grandpa is the best Grandpa in the world—no, the universe—and Yuri will fight anyone who says otherwise. He was the best Grandpa when he used to carry Yuri home from school on his shoulders and he’s the best Grandpa now Yuri has to remember not to jump on him.

But there are some things even the best Grandpas _do not understand._

In the case of Yuri’s Grandpa, this thing is Yuri’s best friend, who Grandpa insists on referring to as ‘that Kazakh skater.’

Yuri keeps telling Grandpa that Otabek has a name, but each time Grandpa just snorts disapprovingly and forgets it all over again. Every time Yuri has spoken to him on the phone since the Grand Prix final, Grandpa has demanded, “And is that Kazakh skater still leading you astray?”

“No!” Yuri shouts every time, and then feels bad and tries to find a way to explain to Grandpa that Otabek is, well, _Otabek._ “Grandpa, he can land a quad Lutz now. He sent me the video, but he never posted it online.”

For some reason, this does nothing to convince Grandpa that Otabek is actually amazing.

“He _likes_ me,” Yuri tries instead.

Grandpa takes a long breath and then says carefully, “Yurochka.”

“You’ll see,” Yuri insists. “You just have to meet him.”

The opportunity doesn’t arise for a while. Then there’s an ice show in Moscow that Yakov has determined would be a useful off-season practice. The money is good, so Yuri, Mila, and Georgi all troop south. Victor’s doing a similar circuit in Japan, which is unusually tactful for the idiot, because Georgi announces a week beforehand what they’ve all known without asking—this is his retirement performance. Next season, he will be coaching with Yakov.

Yuri doesn’t like thinking about that—doesn’t like the reminder that they will all get old in the end. Instead, he spends every evening on Skype, grousing at Otabek about the stupid weather and the stupid costume that he has to wear and the stupid balletic routines he’s still not allowed to deviate from and how he’d much rather be in Almaty.

“It’s ten degrees hotter here than in St Petersburg,” Otabek tells him seriously. “You would melt.”

“I would not.”

Otabek is fanning himself half-heartedly with a folded bit of paper. “Then I would melt and you would slip on my congealed remains and break your ankle.”

“Beka, that’s disgusting,” Yuri says, not without admiration. Heat exhaustion makes Otabek unusually eloquent (also, unusually underdressed—Yuri has never seen him bare-armed before and is oddly distracted by it. He’s never noticed to anyone’s biceps before, not even his own).

“Which bit?”

“All of it. My ankles _matter_.”

Otabek snorts and then says, “You’d be bored, anyway. My sister would slap you down if you interrupted her reading.”

“And why would I be spending time with your sister?” Yuri demands.

Otabek gives him a sideways half-smile. “Well, I’ll be skating in Moscow for the next few weeks, so…”

Yuri has to yell at him for a bit about that, because _seriously_ , Beka! He finishes with, “And then you can meet my Grandpa and show him you’re not a kidnapper!”

Otabek’s eyes widen slightly, but all he says, because he’s _Otabek_ , is, “I’d be honoured.”

“Hah,” Yuri says, deeply satisfied.

  


He gets to Moscow three days before Otabek—gets to sleep in his own bedroom, not some crappy dorm room or Lilia’s spare room, which is full of old crap he’s not supposed to touch, gets to eat his Grandpa’s cooking and tell him everything that has happened since the last time he was home, rushing through even the things he has told Grandpa before, because over-the-phone is not the same as face-to-face.

Then Otabek texts to say he is at the rink and Yuri drags Grandpa there to fetch him right away.

Otabek is standing on the steps to the rink when they get there, squinting along the busy road. Yuri is out of the door as soon as Grandpa stops the car, because Otabek is here, Otabek is here, Otabek is _here!_

He yells, “Beka!”, leaps, and trusts Otabek to catch him.

Otabek says, “Oof,” but does not drop him, and Yuri cackles gleefully in his ear and hangs on tight, his arms locked around Otabek’s neck and his legs around his waist.

“I have to go back to practising in a few minutes,” Otabek tells him.

“You do not!” Yuri says. “You only just got here!”

“Which is why I need to practise.”

“You need to eat lunch.” Grandpa is climbing up the steps towards him so Yuri yells, “Grandpa! Grandpa! It’s Otabek!”

“My ear, Yura,” Otabek says, sounded pained.

Yuri, feeling repentant, mutters an apology into his shoulder.

Grandpa stops in front of them. He looks unusually stern. “So,” he says. “You’re Otabek Altin.”

Otabek wriggles his shoulders in a way which somehow transfers Yuri to his back rather than his side, and holds out his hand, “I’m pleased to meet you, sir. Yuri has told me much about you. He loves you very much.”

Yuri gives up trying to pull himself up and makes gagging sounds against Otabek’s back instead, because _so embarrassing._

“Hmm,” Grandpa says.

Yuri digs his knee into Otabek’s back and levers himself up to tuck his chin over Otabek’s shoulder. Otabek doesn’t wince. Yuri says crossly, “Tell him he has to have lunch with us, Grandpa!”

Grandpa gives him a look, though Yuri’s not sure which look it is. He says, “Have you eaten yet, Otabek?”

“No, sir, but I really should get back to—”

“Have lunch with us!” Yuri commands, kicking Otabek in the thigh with every word.

Otabek tells him, “You are very violent.”

“Hah,” Yuri says in satisfaction, but stops kicking him. “Don’t argue with me, then.”

Grandpa is looking thoughtful. Then he says, “Come. Both of you.”

Yuri makes Otabek carry him back to the car, and tells himself that it’s out of revenge, not just because he likes the way it feels to trust someone to be careful with him. Sometimes it feels like everyone wants something of him, expects something more extraordinary than the record-breaking things he’s already done.

Grandpa and Otabek are the only people who simply _like_ him, and so he needs them to like each other.

“I should really let my coach know where I am,” Otabek says as he climbs into the front seat.

“Later,” Yuri says, poking him in the back through the seat. 

“Seatbelt, Yuri,” Grandpa tells him and he sinks back obediently. As they make their way through the midday traffic, he does his best to tell Otabek everything about the places they are passing, from the University to that flight of steps he used to skateboard down when he was little, before he decided he’d rather have blades under his feet than wheels. Otabek listens to it all gravely, asks careful questions, and nods as if he is memorising Yuri’s answers for a test. Yuri can see his face in the mirror, and knows now what the curled up corner of his mouth and the crease of his eye mean—Otabek is happy to be here.

He can see Grandpa’s face too, and watches as it changes from suspicion to amusement to an odd sort of wry resignation that Yuri doesn’t understand.

Then they are back at Grandpa’s flat, and Grandpa goes to heat up soup while Yuri drags Otabek to see every corner of every room.

It’s not until mid-evening, after Otabek has methodically answered every one of Grandpa’s questions about his life and helped with the washing up, that Yuri’s phone goes off with the ear-piercing burst of static that he has assigned as Yakov’s ringtone.

“What?” Yuri demands.

“Yuri,” Grandpa says.

“Where are you?” Yakov demands.

Because Grandpa is listening, Yuri bites back his first response and just says, “At home with Grandpa. I don’t need to practise until tomorrow.”

“And do you happen to have Otabek Altin with you?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Because,” Yakov grinds out, “his coach has spent all afternoon scouring the streets of Moscow for him and is now here blaming me and my skaters for his disappearance.”

Oops. Yuri lowers his phone and says, “You forgot to phone your coach, didn’t you?”

Otabek goes wide-eyed and grabs his phone out of his pocket at once. He grimaces and holds it up. “Battery.”

“Idiot,” Yuri tells him fondly. To Yakov, he says, “You old men need to stop fussing. We’ll bring him back in one piece. Eventually.”

He hangs up before Yakov can deafen him, and says triumphantly, “Hah. That will show Victor!”

“What?” Otabek is clearly not listening.

Yuri points out gleefully, “This time I kidnapped you!”

Otabek looks up at him, and then says, his voice softening, “So you did. Can I borrow your phone now?”

“Let them worry,” Yuri advises, but hands it over. It’s kind of his fault anyway, since he distracted Otabek in the first place.

Otabek goes into the kitchen to call his coach, and Yuri suddenly realises that Grandpa is making a very strange noise. Yuri looks over at him in worry.

Grandpa is laughing so hard he is pounding his fist against the chair arm. 

“What?” Yuri demands, but Grandpa is laughing too much to explain.

  


After that, Grandpa asks a different question every time he phones. “Yurochka,” he asks sternly, “are you still leading that poor Kazakh boy astray?”

And Yuri looks at the latest playlist Otabek has sent him, which is usually called something like ‘24 songs to listen to as you imagine the tragic and untimely death of a living legend of your choice’ and whines, “Grandpa, that’s not fair!”

And then Grandpa laughs at him again, and Yuri pretends to mind more than he does.

Because his Grandpa is the best. 


	3. Skating (except when it's an absolute fucking disaster)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And time for some messy, miserable growing up. Warning for underage drinking.
> 
> Also, personal headcanon--Leo de la Iglesia is totally the designated driver of the ice skating world, right?

Yuri grows an inch in the week after the Olympics and two more in the months after that. 

“I don’t know why you’re complaining about that timing,” Guang Hong tells him bitterly. “At least yours wasn’t the month  _before_.” 

Okay, that’s a fair point. All the same, Yuri points out, “Did you see what happened at the Worlds?”

“Yeah,” Guang Hong says miserably. “I was watching from the bottom of the scoreboard. I thought I was done with this.”

Guang Hong hadn’t been the fucking favourite, but Yuri’s not Victor, so he doesn’t point that out. He’s never really spoken to Guang Hong much before—too soft, too nice, too far off the top of the world, but misery loves company. They’ve escaped the sucking black hole of wedding preparations to hide out on the beach at Hatsetsu. Yuri’s grudgingly willing to admit this was actually a good idea—warm sand makes everything ache less.

“I just want it to be _over_ ,” he grouses. “Why can’t I wake up when it’s done?”

Guang Hong shudders. “Think how much worse your balance would be if that happened.”

Yuri groans out loud. “I hate puberty.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Guang Hong mutters. There’s a note in his voice which makes Yuri sit up in interest.

“Ji Guang Hong, do you have alcohol with you?”

“Only because I haven’t unpacked it from my bag yet,” Guang Hong says, but he doesn’t sound all that resolute about it.

Yuri glares at him. “Share. Before they catch us and someone phones Katsuki to come and get us.”

“They won’t catch us,” Guang Hong says confidently and rummages in his bag. He produces two plastic cups and three bottles of what looks superficially like diet cola.

Yuri raises an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“Yuri,” Guang Hong says, and his smile is surprisingly devious, “I spend the off-season in America. I probably won’t get served there until after I retire. Trust me—I know how to smuggle drinks to a party.”

Yuri sneers his opinion of that. Skate America was boring this year—no Victor to annoy, no Otabek—and then they topped it off by serving almost everyone lemonade at the banquet. “What is that?”

“The cheapest thing Leo and I could find in the duty-free,” Guang-Hong says, as if that ought to be obvious. Yuri’s starting to like this kid more and more. 

He lifts his plastic cup in a toast. “To the shittiness of growth spurts.”

“Hear, hear,” Guang Hong says and downs it.

Seriously, Yuri is going to smuggle this kid home and give him to Mila for her birthday. He lifts his own cup, relaxing for the first time since he realised, mid-routine, that his feet weren’t going where they were supposed to, and knocks it back.

Whatever it is, it’s vile—sweet and fruity with a kick like a mule. All the same, he pours another cup.

By the time anyone comes looking for them, they’re both woozy and giggling. 

“Oh my god,” Leo de la Iglesia says faintly, staring down at them. “I should never have shown you that thing with the coke bottles.”

Guang Hong lurches to his knees and falls forward against Leo. “It was a good thing,” he says earnestly. “Leo, Leo, Leo, never get into a drinking contest with a Russian. Even a little one.”

“I thought I’d taught you that too,” Leo says, still sounding like he’s in shock. What, has he never seen someone drunk before? His eyes cut across to Yuri and his eyes go wide. “Uh, I don’t think you’re supposed to be that colour.”

“What?” Yuri says and lifts his arm up for a look. It takes three attempts, and then he says, “Shit. Wow.”

“Wow,” Guang Hong agrees, leaning over to have a look. Then he falls over and lands on Yuri. “Wow,” he says again. “That’s very, very pink.”

“Pinker than Victor’s arse in winter,” Yuri agrees. “Wow.”

“When have you seen—” Leo starts and then pauses. “Okay, yeah, who hasn’t? Can either of you stand up?”

“We have growth spurts,” Yuri informs him sadly. “I hate my knees. And my ankles and my shoulders and my spine and my hips and my bones and my hands and my feet and—” It brings a lump to his throat and he stops to sniff.

“What did I do to deserve this?” Leo asks the sky for some reason. Then he gets his phone out. “Yeah, I found them. Bring help, water, and after sun.”

Phichit, Seung Gil, and Otabek show up a few minutes later. By then Leo has managed to persuade Yuri to crawl into the shade, but they’ve established that he’s not getting onto his feet any time soon. He’s not feeling so good any more, which is obviously Leo’s fault. They were fine until he came along.

“No, no, no,” Guang Hong assures him. “Leo’s nice. Leo’s the nicest.”

Yuri glares at him. “No, he’s not. Otabek’s the nicest.”

Phichit makes a squeaky little noise.

“Put your phone _away_ ,” Leo says to him. “Victor’s already going to kill us.”

“But…” Phichit whines.

“Seung Gil, take his phone away.”

“So unfair,” Phichit sighs, but then he’s crouching beside Yuri. “Hey, not feeling so good?”

He’s annoying, so Yuri informs him, “I am still an Olympic gold medallist and you’re not.”

“I’ll take this one,” Otabek says, and shoulders Phichit aside. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Yuri says and suddenly he’s feeling so dizzy he doesn’t know whether he’s about to cry or throw up.

He does both, and Otabek sits with him, coaxes him into drinking water, and then carries him home. Yuri clings to his back and feels sorry for himself, not least because it’s suddenly obvious that he is now taller than Otabek.

Phichit and Leo have got Guang Hong balanced between them, arms across their shoulders. Yuri thinks that’s very unfair. He demands, “Why can’t I walk?”

“Because you can’t stay upright,” Phichit tells him. 

“It’s not _fair._ ”

“I’ve had two more growth spurts than you,” Guang Hong says miserably. “And they both sucked.”

“Two more?” It’s so horrifying that he repeats it very loudly. “ _Two more?_ ”

“Ears,” Otabek reminds him, but Yuri’s beyond such things.

He howls at the sky, “I’m never going to skate again!”

“You skated last week,” Otabek says and pats Yuri’s hand.

“And I fell down!”

“So did I,” Guang Hong says, and his lip trembles. “We’ve failed. I’m a failure before I’m even twenty!”

“And I’m a failure at _seventeen!_ ” Yuri bawls at him.

Guang Hong bursts into tears. So does Yuri, because nothing else seems sufficient.

“Oh, fuck, oh fuck, he’s _seventeen,_ ” Leo is saying. “We’re going to get arrested. We’re absolutely going to get arrested.”

“No,” Seung Gil says and marches round to poke Yuri in the cheek. He has very pointy figures and Yuri breaks off mid-sob to glare at him.

“Shut up now,” says Seung Gil.

“Fuck off,” Yuri tells him and immediately feels better for it. He subsides against Otabek’s broad shoulders and listens to Leo comfort Guang Hong.

Eventually Guang Hong quietens down. Leo and Phichit keep up a light, easy chatter. Otabek keeps his hand over Yuri’s and it feels like he’s anchoring Yuri in place.

“Did we ever go through this stage?” Leo wonders. “I don’t remember going through this stage.”

“You spent six months listening to nothing but Leonard Cohen,” Phichit tells him and then adds dreamily, “I decided that if I couldn’t skate, I should be a pop star.”

Leo makes a choking noise and says, “I’ve done karaoke with you. You _can’t sing_.”

“Well, I didn’t know that then,” Phichit says sagely. “Hey, Seung Gil, did you go through this stage?”

Seung Gil seems to consider it. Then he just says, “No.”

By the time they sneak in the back of Yu-topia, Yuri just wants to sleep in a dark room. Otabek makes him drink more water first, and Yuri promptly throws it up all over Otabek’s feet. Otabek shrugs, cleans him up, brings him more water, and leaves him to sleep.

Yuri wakes up two hours later feeling like he’s on fire. He whimpers, closes his eyes again, and then realises that isn’t going to help. He manages to drag himself up enough to grab the glass of water and pills someone has left by the bed. They don’t seem to help much, but they clear his head enough that he remembers everything he has done this afternoon.

And that makes him hide under the sheets again and whimper. There are so many people he will never, ever, ever be able to speak to again. 

And one of them is Otabek.

He deserves every inch of sunburnt skin and more. Oh, _fuck._

After a while, the door opens and someone comes in. Yuri tenses. He’s not sure who would be worse at this point—Victor or Otabek.

“Awake?”

It’s Mari.

Yuri nods, realises she can’t see him, and says, “Yeah.” His voice is horribly croaky.

“Just sunstroke, huh?” Her tone is derisive, but she sets something down beside the bed gently. “I’ve brought you more water, and something for the sunburn.”

Yuri crawls out from under the sheet, glaring at her in readiness. She doesn’t say anything about his reddened eyes but just offers him a bowl of something green and cool-smelling. He dips his stiff fingers in and they immediate feel better.

“Keep slathering it on,” she says, and sits with him while he does. He likes Mari. There’s something restful about the limits of her kindness. She never exceeds what he can tolerate. After a while, she says, as if it means nothing, “I like your friend.”

“Which one?” he asks and realises belatedly that it’s actually a question he can ask.

“The quiet, worried one.” Her eyes narrow. “Not the one who got you drunk even though he’s old enough to know better.”

“I kind of bullied him into it,” Yuri confesses, half to her, half to his pillow, because she’s the kind of person you can trust with things with that.

“Guessed that much.”

The green stuff is working. He feels less like a sausage about to burst now. Maybe he relaxes because of that. Maybe it’s just because she’s so far outside of his world that she’s safe. He blurts out, “What if I can’t skate again?”

She shrugs. “Then you don’t skate again.”

That doesn’t help. “That’s—”

She’s unaffected by his scowl. “And if you don’t, the world won’t end. Not even your world.”

Yuri shuts his mouth on what he wants to say. 

She clears his glass away and leaves him the bowl. As she gets to the door, she says, “Want to talk to him?”

Yuri doesn’t need to ask who. 

Except, he’s just been messily drunk all over Otabek. Literally all over Otabek.

“What if he hates me?”

“Yurio,” she says, and it is too kind now, “that boy will never hate you.”

He thinks about that after she’s gone, and for the first time it occurs to him that it’s something to be terrified of as well as amazed by. 

He’s trying to get goop on his back without stretching anything that hurts when Otabek comes in. Without saying anything, he comes over, moves Yuri’s hair out of the way, and applies green goop to the stinging back of Yuri’s neck. For some stupid reason, Yuri’s eyes immediately fill with tears. To hide it, he says, “I’m so fucking stupid.”

“It happens,” Otabek says.

Yuri takes a deep breath and mutters, as fast and low as he can, “I’m sorry, all right.”

Otabek’s hands go still for a moment. Then he resumes, everything he touches turning cool under his careful hands. He says, “We all process it differently.”

“Like you did anything this stupid.”

“I climbed up a tree.”

“Seriously? That’s it?”

“I didn’t come down for a week.”

Okay, so Yuri _definitely_ has questions about that. What comes out of his mouth instead is a miserable snarl of, “I don’t know what to do.”

Otabek is quiet for a while. Then he says, “First, accept that this year will not be as good as last year.”

Yuri hunches his shoulders—which hurts—and lets out an annoyed sound.

“Which is not your fault. Then, find a way to use that time.”

“Doing what?”

“I watched other skaters—on ice, online. People whose bodies had changed in the same ways as mine. I studied them, saw how their skating changed, learned.”

Okay, that’s actually useful. Yakov can probably help him with that.

“But you also need to think about skating.”

Fuck that. Yuri makes a noise which his cat would probably be proud of. “I can’t _stop_ thinking.”

“You’re not thinking about skating. You’re thinking about not skating.”

Yuri clamps his teeth together and counts to ten. Twice, with an extra _fuck this_ between every number. Otabek is one of his favourite people in the entire universe, but sometimes he makes things just too complicated.

“Take the time to think about _how_ you skate, Yura. Think why.”

“Why?” His head hurts, he’s uneasily aware that the more Otabek’s hands slide coolly across the nape of his neck the hotter his skin feels from below, and everything in the whole fucking world is confusing.

“Why do you skate, Yura?”

“Because I can,” Yuri snaps out. “Because I want to _win_.”

Otabek doesn’t say anything, just lets the words rest in the air. They sound sort of stupid like that.

They sound very young.

Oh, yeah, this year is going to absolutely fucking suck.

  



	4. Yelling (except when it doesn't fucking work)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Growing up, finally.

One of the first things Yuri learned was that you have to be loud to be seen ( _Mama! Mama! Look at me!_ ). He’s yelled and stormed his way through seventeen years of his life, and he has no intention of stopping now.He yells every time he misses a landing, yells when his skates pinch because his fucking feet have grown again, yells at Victor and Yakov and Victor and Lilia and Victor and Mila and Victor and Victor. His yells carry further now he’s taller, which is about the only benefit towards it.

Then he sees one of the little wide-eyed junior skaters flinch a little as he starts to bellow. The roar of fury is already on its way out and can’t be stopped, but he never meant to make her miss her landing so badly.

He spends the next week of practice in absolute silence, going over his footwork so many times his calf muscles start twitching the movements in his sleep.

Mila tells him it’s not his fault. Georgi tells him it’s not his fault. Even Yakov tells him it’s not his fault.

But little Irka is sitting out her first Junior Grand Prix with a brace on her ankle and he feels like shit. He finds out (by totally unweird and creepy means like actually asking her coach, thank you, Mila) that she’s a fan of Otabek’s which is even worse, because damn it, if he was going to take someone out, it should have been a JJ Girl, not someone with good taste (“Remorse is still a limited skill set, I see,” Mila says brightly).

Otabek makes horrified eyes at him over Skype, but he has both a soft heart and a thirteen year sister, and is eventually prevailed upon to tweet Irka a public get well message, albeit only by hiding behind said little sister in the accompanying selfie. Irka clutches her phone to her heart for the next two days and Yuri stammers gratefully at Otabek next time they speak.

Ayana texts him that night: _Promise me you will NEVER EVER EVER ask my brother to jump off a cliff because HE WOULD!!!!!_

 _I WOULD NEVER!!!_ Yuri texts back in horror. He likes Ayana, who is almost as good at bossing Otabek around as he is. The all-caps are the closest he has come to yelling in days.

_Good because I would PUSH YOU AFTER HIM_

By now Yuri is resigned to the fact that he wouldn’t need to be pushed. He manages not to tell Ayana that (he suspects she knows).

He’s still feeling like a horrible human being when he has to leave for the Trophée de France. To make things even fucking worse, there’s some stupid Aeroflot fuck-up which leaves Victor and Yakov stranded in Moscow (”A blizzard is not technically a fuck-up, Yuri,” says Mila) so he and Katsuki are off to Paris via fucking Reykjavik with only Georgi standing in as coach for both of them. Yuri is pretty convinced Georgi’s main use as a coach is as chum to toss to the paparazzi (he feeds them even more emotive soundbites than Yakov) so this is not fucking ideal when he’s going in with only a fourth place in Skate America under his belt.

On the bright side, Otabek is going to be there, and Leo and Guang Hong, who Yuri is sort of used to now (”Friends with,” his inner Mila voice corrects with a smirk). They are all people he can shout around without guilt and despite the fact he still can’t land his quad salchow reliably again, he relaxes a bit, sleeps through a shitty in-flight movie, and wakes up ready to scream happily in the teeth of every snotty Parisian who side eyes his fashion choices.

He doesn’t notice until too late that Katsuki is going through the opposite process. It’s late when they get to the hotel and Georgi’s freaking out in mangled French because he can’t remember if Yakov transferred the booking name to him and Yuri just wants to sleep and at the very same time find Otabek.

Otabek, social media tells him, has been diverted by the southern edge of the same shitty weather system and is currently stuck in the airport at Istanbul. Guang Hong, who has already been there for two days, is with him, which is how it is on social media at all. They appear to be sleeping on their bags in the main terminus so Yuri leaves Georgi to sort things out at the hotel and goes in search of someone he can yell at until they pull enough strings to get his friends here (seriously, is there not a fucking train or snow plough or something? They’re on the right continent, at least).

Rage vented and reassurance received that the ISU will at least try to get any stranded skaters into hotels for the night, he stomps back to the hotel and falls straight into bed.

It’s not until the next morning that he takes in the dark shadows under Katsuki’s eyes and the way he plays with his food. Well, crap.

Even six months ago, Yuri would have demanded credit for how much he tries over the next few hours. Katsuki does his practice skate like he’s in the middle of a row of dominos, and Yuri still shouts encouragement at him from across the rink. He still thinks he’s better at this than Georgi, whose idea of an inspirational speech involves complex metaphors and the noble ideals of sacrifice for a cause.

Unfortunately, Yuri’s methods don’t work either, and by mid-afternoon Katsuki is spooky-eyed and saying things like, “It’s Victor’s last season and I’m not going to qualify to skate with him in the Final and how will I ever overcome the shame?”

“You’re the World Champion, idiot!” Yuri snarls at him, still fucking bitter about that. “Of course you’re going to qualify!”

That only makes Katsuki look more sick and pale. Yuri can’t exactly use Victor’s motivational methods, which mostly involve excessive amounts of tongue, so he tries frantically and disastrously to be cheerful.

He makes it three words before he drops an f-bomb. Instead of smiling at it, Katsuki just hunches up more. Yuri freaks out, swears a lot more, and then gives up and goes back to yelling. Eventually Georgi asserts the most authority Yuri has ever seen out of him and drags them both out of the rink to rest.

Katsuki hides in his room. Yuri eyes the rain streaming down the windows, checks his phone for updates (Otabek and Guang Hong are finally in the air, Leo has given up waiting for a connecting flight out of London and is on a train somewhere sharing SoundCloud links and photos of rain-lashed windows) and hate-texts Victor a few more times.

He gets no reply.

Frustrated and with nobody to take out his rage on (the only people already here he knows are a couple of French Juniors and Yuri is trying very, very hard not to be that person—fuck you, JJ). He ends up lying flat on his bed in the hotel, visualising his salchow over and over again until he starts obsessing over all the ways he has fucked up said salchow since his growth spurt.

Eventually he gives up staring at the ceiling and goes to drag Katsuki out in search of food. Katsuki looks even worse than Yuri feels, and Georgi looks like he’s about to burst into hysterical sobs at the sight of both of them (it must be a Tuesday). He’s still trying to call Yakov.

“Why won’t he pick up?” he demands of Yuri. “Is he testing me? He’s testing me, isn’t he?”

Katsuki says, voice trembling as he obviously tries to be brave for his (fucking useless) temporary coach’s sake, “They’re probably dead.”

How the fuck is Yuri the most emotionally stable person on this team? Oh, god, why is he even _thinking_ the word 'team'? “Or _maybe_ ,” he points out, very loudly, “there’s a power cut in Moscow, like the fucking internet _says there is_. Because winter is utterly shit!”

“And yet,” Otabek says behind him, “you took up a sport on ice.”

Yuri has never wanted to throw himself into someone’s arms so much in his life. He manages to hold back the urge, but can’t control his mouth as well. “I skate because I hate winter and want to strap knives to my feet to cut that bitch.”

Leo says cheerfully, “You are actually the most ridiculous person in the entire world.” It doesn’t quite sound like an insult.

Yuri still makes what he thinks is an extremely eloquent hand gesture, but doesn’t get to expand on it, because Otabek’s hand is on his shoulder and Otabek is pulling him in for a hug. It’s a proper hug too, not the weird, awkward, shoulder-bumping man-hug most people give him these days, and Yuri gives up trying to be someone he is not and squeezes him so tight Otabek’s breath squeaks out of him on a laugh.

“Hello, Yuri,” he says. “Don’t make murder noises at Leo.”

“I’ll murder anyone I want to,” Yuri tells the side of Otabek’s head happily (damn it, why does he keep growing?). “And you _will_ hide the bodies with me.”

“Probably,” Otabek agrees peacefully. “Hello, other Yuuri. Georgi.”

“Where have you been?” Yuri demands without letting go of Otabek. He can feel his shoulders unknotting with every second he clings on.

“We all went straight to the rink,” Leo says. “They’re still waiting for some of the ice dancers and pairs—the Estonians are stuck and there’s some very convoluted story about why Dutch Anton is here but Miep is still sleeping on Mickey’s couch—or maybe with Mickey. I heard both.”

“I heard it was Sara, not Mickey, or maybe with Sara on Mickey’s couch,” Guang Hong says and Katsuki makes little scandalised noises that every person in this group ignores as sheer rank hypocrisy (every single one of them has been exposed to the sight of his dick in a public place on at least two occasions).

“Maybe it’s both,” Leo suggests a little too dreamily. Georgi looks intrigued.

Yuri doesn’t care about any of these people. He says to Otabek, “What are we doing now?”

“ _I_ am booking in, putting my bags in my room, and sleeping.”

“Boring.”

“I am an old man, Yuri,” Otabek tells him. “You say so yourself. Often.”

Yuri makes outraged noises in his ear and locks his arms around Otabek’s neck so Otabek has to drag him all over the lobby and into the elevator while Yuri makes smug noises against his spine. Everyone else seems to find this hilarious, although for some reason they are laughing at Otabek more than him.

“Why are you laughing like that?” Yuri demands of Leo once they are in the lift. “You sound like a donkey.”

“I’ve just realised that you are basically my cat.”

Yuri sneers at him and asks meanly, “Your cat can land a better triple axel than you?”

Leo just laughs. “Bad kitty.” Then he _ruffles Yuri’s hair._

“Not the hair,” Otabek says glumly, but by then Yuri has climbed off him and has wrapped himself around Leo’s head and shoulders to shout three languages' worth of profanities in his ear. It takes both Guang Hong and Otabek to peel him off, partly because Leo is laughing too hard to fight back.

“When did you learn to swear in Kazakh?” Otabek wonders, locking his arm through Yuri’s before he can reopen hostilities.

“Talking to your sister,” Yuri tells him honestly and laughs like a hyena as Otabek grumbles the rest of the way to his room.

“You two are so—” Guang Hong starts, but then stops on a squeak, probably because Leo has kicked him. Yuri decides to be magnanimous and forgives Leo all previous trespasses. He doesn’t want anyone speculating on what he and Otabek are, because then he might have to think about it, and then there would be things to say to each other—horrible, complicated, emotional things that neither of them are any good at.

They lose Leo and Guang Hong there, narrowly avoid Chris on the way back down to the lobby (he’s on his phone, regaling someone with what Yuri is only mostly sure is an untrue account of how he’s been selling his body to hitchhike across the Alps), and everything is going swimmingly until they arrive back in the lobby and find Katsuki sitting by the window, staring out into the rain and completely oblivious to the hovering press pack.

Next time Yuri sees Victor Fucking Nikiforov he is going to install a radio transmitter in his stupid shiny forehead so this cannot happen again.

He shoots Otabek an agonised, apologetic look and swerves over there. “Oy! Get up! Stop moping!”

“Sorry, Yurio,” Katsuki says meekly. Yuri hates him all the time, with a low, comfortable heat, but he’s hates him like a thousand burning suns when he goes meek. People who skate like they rule the world should not be _allowed_ to be meek.

“Don’t apologise,” he snaps. Where the fuck is Georgi? Why isn’t Victor? (He doesn’t need to finish that thought—there are so many things Victor isn’t).

Beside him, Otabek clears his throat and says, “Would you like to get tea with us, Yuuri?”

So they’re getting tea. Okay.

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“It’s not intruding if you’ve been invited, moron,” Yuri snaps.

Otabek says, “I know a place.”

Otabek always knows a place. Yuri doesn’t know how he does it, but it’s very cool.

When they finally get there, staggering out of the rain, Otabek’s place is perfect. It’s a small Moroccan cafe, the wood around the edge of the booths worn with age, and it's warm in every way. The air smells like rich coffee, mint, and lemons, and they aren’t greeted with the disdain Yuri usually relishes about Paris but with warm insistence that they sit by the stove and dry off. Yuri wouldn’t have chosen it himself, although he would have let Otabek cajole him into appreciation, but Katsuki clearly loves it.

They drink green tea sweet with mint, and Otabek says yearningly, “I dream of coffee.”

Yuri already knows this, but he just says, “Ice cream.”

Katsuki breathes, “ _Everything_ my mother cooks.”

Yuri thinks about that and then nods. “Yeah, okay.”

“And your Grandpa’s pirozhkis.”

“Poutine,” Otabek sighs, which is bizarre enough that they both just stare at him. He shrugs. “Canada. Growth spurt.”

“Pictures!” Yuri demands immediately. He needs to see this—needs to know how Otabek got through this and still came out graceful and fierce.

“No.”

“ _Beka_.”

“No,” Otabek repeated, looking a little panicky.

“Fine. I’ll ask Ayana.”

Otabek makes reproachful eyes at him and makes vague fluttering gestures at his face. “But I—and then— _Yura._ ”

Katsuki is giving them a puzzled look. Then, very slowly, he begins to smile.

He keeps that weird creepy smile on his face for the next hour, even as they rely on Otabek’s patchy French to work out what on the menu they can eat, and Yuri texts Ayana under the table and gets back a picture of Otabek’s terrible teenage acne which should evoke mockery but actually makes him feel like standing over it and snarling at anyone who laughs.

The rain is heavy against the window, the food is good, and although there’s still a knot of something he refuses to call fear in his stomach at the thought of tomorrow’s short programme, Yuri can ignore it. It feels as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist. It’s just them (and Katsuki, but he’s only mildly annoying without his pet disaster clinging to his hip).

Eventually the rain slows and they head back to the hotel. Halfway there, both Katsuki’s and Yuri’s phones start having spasms in their pockets. Katsuki spends the journey back murmuring ridiculous sickly things at Victor with shining eyes. Yuri props himself up against Otabek’s shoulder, stretches his legs across the aisle and yells back as Yakov lectures him from the far side of Europe.

He doesn’t notice Katsuki take a sly picture until the Instagram notification pops up. It’s a good picture—Otabek’s not looking at him but at their reflections in the window, the faintest of smiles on his face.

And Yuri looks like himself, like he’s okay in his own skin, for the first time in any photo since this stupid growth spurt shit began.

He likes the photo, leaves a rude comment below Victor’s gushing response, and relaxes, letting the night rush by.

Much as he likes to shout, sometimes it’s okay not to say anything at all.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The word Guang Hong doesn't say is 'married.' Because subtle these two ain't.


	5. Winning (sometimes, very occasionally, when he doesn't do it himself)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuri loves to win, but he's also learning to appreciate other people's victories.
> 
> Or Yuri watches, learns, understands, and freaks the fuck out (all of these things are Otabek's fault).

Yuri loves to win, loves it like fire and screeching guitars and sugar highs. He loves knowing he can send money home, loves the certainty that the whole world is looking at him in envy, loves being unbeatable.

Losing, on the other hand, sucks. 

“I don’t know why you’re complaining,” Guang Hong says, the night after the next Worlds. “You’re still on the podium half the time.”

“But not with gold,” Yuri informs him, kicking him lazily, just because he can. “The rest don’t matter.”

“I feel like I’m here under false pretenses. You promised me vodka and all you’re doing is whining.”

Nobody appreciates Yuri’s pain. “You’re only here because Leo isn’t.”

“Leo’s nicer than you.”

Yuri drops his face against the table and groans. “For fuck’s sake, just suck his cock already.”

When he sits up, Guang Hong is giving him the most incredulous look. Yuri flushes and pushes the bottle at him to shut him up. 

Guang Hong makes a low chicken noise at him, but snags the bottle away before Yuri can snatch it back.

The thing about not winning is that he hates it differently now than he did when it started. At first it just made him so angry, made him burn beneath his skin and snap at everyone around him so cruelly that even Mila refused to speak to him for a week. Now it has settled into his bones, makes him dream of falling in empty rinks or of being trapped under the ice, looking up from below the scars of a thousand skates as everyone else jumps and spins without him.

Otabek is the only person he tells about that and somehow, just by listening, he makes it better, makes Yuri believe that he will be back on the right side of the ice again. He also tells Yuri again to start watching other skaters.

“I do. Yakov makes me.”

“Don’t watch them to see how to beat them. Watch them to see how they win.”

“That’s the same thing,” Yuri grumbles and Otabek makes his inwardly laughing face on the other side of the screen.

It’s a while before he works out the difference. It’s by watching Otabek that he does it. There are times, perched up in the back row of the skaters’ seats, when Yuri just watches, scarcely daring to breathe. Nobody skates like Otabek, with the power and grace and fearlessness he shows on the ice. Even when he doesn’t win, he’s beautiful to watch.

 _Beauty is a force of righteousness_ , Lilia had told him years ago, but he’d always thought of it as just another way to fight his way to the top. Now, though, Yuri fumbles his way to understanding what she meant.

There’s a difference between watching to identify how he can beat someone—what their weaknesses and flaws are—and watching to understand how and why they skate.

So he watches and watches and watches. 

He watches everyone—tries to puzzle out the secrets of Katsuki’s lyricism and Phichit’s charisma and Seung Gil’s obsession with technical perfection. He watches JJ, with a sneer, but sees the way both he and Leo build a whole routine around their music. He watches old videos of Victor and Georgi, and others Yakov has trained before them.

Victor catches on and in a show of restraint that makes Yuri want to yell at him even more, doesn’t make a fuss about it. Instead he suggests Yuri look at old recordings of Chris. Yuri makes the requisite gagging noises, but it turns out there is reason in Victor’s madness (pure luck, Yuri is sure). Christophe Giacometti started his first senior season as a pink-cheeked blond mushroom and ended his second as the tallest (and grossest) skater on the senior circuit. Watching him work through that evolution actually does help.

Yuri watches the others at his own competitions, even the juniors and the women and the pairs. He tags along with Katsuki and his idiot coach to competitions he isn’t in, just to watch (and enjoys the faintest flicker of panic on JJ’s face when he spots Yuri practising his best murder eyes from the rink side before the Four Continents).

But Otabek is still his favourite to watch. Everyone else skates like they are trying to take flight and the ice is a mere illusion below them. Otabek skates as if the ice is a world to be conquered, not with sword and shield but with the blades of his skates and the strength of his will. 

He has videos of Otabek in every contest Yuri can track down online, everything from tiny, scowling Junior Otabek to acne-ridden and self-conscious in interviews teenage Otabek to the Otabek he first met in Barcelona, cool and enigmatic (that Otabek looks oddly young to him now he is the same age Otabek was then),

And then there is his Otabek, the Otabek of now, who is both the quiet eye of Yuri’s personal storm and one of the great skaters of his generation. It’s hard to reconcile the two sometimes—to see the Beka who gently mocks him and endures his passions with the faintest of smiles in the hero who storms across the ice.

Yuri loves them both. 

He’s given up trying to lie to himself about that, though he isn’t stupid enough to let a hint of it show. He doesn’t know quite what to do with it—whether to ignore it or act on it. There’s so much to lose and he’s a little afraid of it—afraid of the way Otabek always gives him what he needs, afraid of how much he needs, afraid of all the ways this could end.

So he waits, half in hope and half in dread, to see if it’s something he will grow out of, like shouting at strangers and assuming any skater who doesn’t make it to the podium is unworthy of his notice.

Instead it just grows deeper, not like a well in which he might drown, but like an ocean beneath his sails, ever more fathomless and mysterious. He carries that idea onto the ice with him as he finds his balance again, and skates as if that ocean lies beneath every sheet of ice he performs on.

And he soars.

He wins Skate America, wins the Cup of China, but takes silver in the Grand Prix final. 

That’s when he realises how different winning feels now. It is no longer so razor-sharp and sweet—there’s more to his sense of triumph now he’s learned how to fail and pick himself up again. It feels better than ever before, less fragile. Maybe that’s why it isn’t hard to smile up at Otabek and offer his congratulations.

He even means them, and Otabek obviously hears it in his voice, because his face softens. Katsuki, on his other side, is smiling too and Yuri sees a fainter shadow of what he is feeling there—that strangely heady mixture of disappointment and respect (more disappointment, perhaps, because this is Katsuki’s last final, but it’s obvious that he doesn’t like either Yuri or Otabek any less for beating him).

Russian nationals are an easy win, though there’s a junior he’ll have to watch out for in a year or two, and he blazes through Europeans.

He’s still recovering when Otabek asks if he’ll be coming to the Four Continents in Japan this year.

Yuri has been to watch for the last three years, but he still rolls his eyes and pretends to be put upon. “I suppose I could.”

“Good,” Otabek says and doesn’t elaborate. Even on a small screen, Yuri can pick up the crinkling of his eyes which means he’s doing it deliberately.

He resolves not to ask, and spends the next few minutes moaning about his rinkmates and sneaking glances at Otabek to see if he’s about to crack.

Otabek continues to look serene.

Yuri kicks his feet up on the table, groans, and says, “Fine! Why?”

“Why what, Yura?”

“Why do you want me at the Four Continents?”

Something odd happens to Otabek’s smile, but all he says is, “I was just wondering if I’d see you there.”

“ _Beka!_ ” Yuri whines.

Otabek relents. “There’s something I’ve been practising. Something I’d like you to see. A surprise.”

“What?”

“You’ll have to wait and see.”

Yuri claps a hand to his chest and makes betrayed noises at him. Otabek smiles back and refuses to give any more hints than that, and it descends into the sort of bickering, noisy on his side and provocatively stoic on Otabek’s, that makes his chest feel warm and his smiles light.

One of these days, when they’re finally face to face, Yuri’s willpower won’t be enough to hold him back, and he’ll have to kiss that little smirk off Otabek’s stupid, beautiful face.

  


Yuri watches the short programmes with a twitchy nervous excitement. Otabek still hasn’t given him a hint of what he has planned, but he has been unusually withdrawn for the last few days, quietly disappearing into himself in the way he does when he’s nervous.

When he approaches the ice, Yuri leans forward, cups his hands around his mouth and puts the full force of his adult lungs into his yell. “ _Davai_ , Otabek!”

Otabek looks up, nods gravely, and heads onto the ice.

“Have you ever noticed,” Victor asks from the seat next to him, “that the whole stadium goes quiet and waits for that now?”

“Shut up,” Yuri says, his cheeks heating up. He’s wondered about that, but he’s been assuming it was his imagination.

“When are you going to put that poor boy out of his misery, Yurio?” Victor wonders.

“ _Shut up_ ,” Yuri snarls again. “I’m _watching._ ”

Otabek’s short program is very, very good, from the step sequences to his soaring axel, but it’s the same routine Yuri’s been watching and critiquing all season, albeit polished to perfection. Yuri barely breathes through it, but the same time he’s analyzing everything he sees—the slightest over-rotation on his triple axel, a faint dip landing his quad salchow, but that combination spin is better than it’s ever been. 

He finishes in second going into the free program and seems pleased. 

“He is very good,” Victor murmurs as they start heading backstage afterwards. “Worried you can’t beat him at the Worlds?”

“Glad I’ll actually have a challenge this year,” Yuri says automatically.

Victor makes a disgruntled face at him. “My Yuuri has always been too much for you.”

“Your Yuuri is old,” Yuri says heartlessly. “Make him retire already— _before_ you break him.”

“Believe me,” Victor murmurs, “I tried. He’s more stubborn than you.”

Yuri had been an unwilling witness to far too many of those arguments last year. He isn’t going to argue that point. “Your stupid fault for demanding five seasons from him, arsehole. He’ll end up breaking both his ankles giving that to you.”

Victor knows genuinely stricken. “Yurio!”

Yuri is fairly sure Katsuki has more sense than that. Fairly. 

Victor sighs heavily, then clearly lets it go, slinging an arm around Yuri’s neck. “The Nishigoris are here, and Minako and Mari. Joining us?”

Yuri shrugs his arm off. “Otabek and I have plans.”

“Of course.” Victor eyes him sideways. “Tell me, does _he_ know that you’re dating?”

Yuri scowls at him. “We’re not like that. We don’t talk about stupid things like that.”

Victor’s quiet for a while. Then he says, his voice soft, “Yurochka. There are some things you _have_ to talk about.”

This is the Victor that frustrates him the most—the one who is sincere and well-meaning and very hard to mock without actually being a dick. Yuri hunches his shoulders, scowls at the floor, and mutters, “Yeah, and when I do, it won’t be to you.”

“Yura,” Victor murmurs back and the old fuckwit has the gall to sound proud. 

Then, of course, he ruins it by looking ahead, and waving gleefully at Katsuki and his friends with a gleeful shout of, “Yuuuuuri! Our little Yurio is growing up! At last!”

“Go fuck yourself,” Yuri tells him and is horrified that it actually sounds affectionate.

  


He keeps thinking about it, though, on the way back to the hotel. He thinks about while he’s waiting for Otabek to escape the press corps and get changed, and while he’s fussing with his own outfit, and isn’t all that surprised when he realises that he’s dressed up more than he normally would to grab food during a competition.

Otabek doesn’t say anything when he shows up outside Yuri’s door, but Yuri doesn’t think he’s imagining the warmth in his eyes.

He wants more, he realises. He wants to be able to lean in and kiss Otabek hello, wants to take his hand as they walk to the restaurant, wants the confidence that they’ll be going back together—to the same room, the same bed. He wants Otabek to touch him, wants his hands on Otabek’s skin.

But he doesn’t say anything about that. It’s the middle of a competition, and Otabek needs to focus. Instead he grumbles about things he knows will amuse Otabek, and they make their way to the restaurant—not quite touching, not quite meeting each other’s eyes, but close enough that Yuri thinks he can feel Otabek’s presence in the air against his skin.

The restaurant is small and cozy. The waiters obviously recognise them, but are discreet enough not to make a fuss. They eat lightly, talk more, more than once run out of words and just look at each other. They’ve both been invited to Hasetsu for a few days once the competition is over, and have been allowed to go on condition that they let Victor oversee their practice while they’re there. Yuri thinks that might be the moment—they can talk then, away from the eyes of the world. 

He’s waited this long. He can wait a few more days.

Except Otabek has promised to surprise him. Maybe he didn’t mean on ice.

That thought makes something tight and hopeful catch in Yuri’s throat. Otabek’s not the sort of person who will proclaim his love on ice, not like Victor and his idiot (and Yuri himself, if he didn’t know how mortified Otabek would be), but maybe afterwards. Maybe Otabek will quietly slide away from the kiss and cry and come looking for him, kiss him in the shadows backstage, to the sound of tinny music and applause, in the world where they both belong.

Maybe.

Yuri wants that too—wants _everything_. He wants to kiss Otabek and compete against him, wants to beat him  and cheer him when he wins, wants the knowledge that one day they will go home together—not just to a hotel, but to somewhere that is theirs. He wants them to own six cats and fight over who does the laundry and hang all their medals over the fireplace so everyone who visits them gnaws on their own hearts in envy. He wants to know that they don’t need any of that _yet_ , because it’s enough to be in love and still have worlds to conquer side by side.

Yuri _wants_.

When they get back to the hotel, they linger outside their doors, talking quietly. Yuri doesn’t want to say goodnight, but he knows he has to. Otabek needs to sleep.

It surprises him when Otabek pulls him into a sudden, tight hug—surprises him even more when what Otabek says next is, “Your Free Programme at the Europeans scored higher than mine at the Grand Prix Final.”

“Yeah,” Yuri says, his whole body flushed and warm, “and I’m going to beat you to the gold at Worlds.” He wonders if it’s obvious to Otabek that what he means is _I love you._

Otabek laughs, a little nervously, “I’d like to see you try.”

“I know,” Yuri says and smiles.

Otabek pulls back, puts both his hands on Yuri’s shoulders, and says, very intensely, “Watch me tomorrow, Yura.”

“I always do,” Yuri says, but Otabek’s already pulling away and disappearing into his own room.

“What the hell?” Yuri murmurs at the closed door, but he knows better than to expect any answers tonight.

  


By the time Victor and Katsuki settle next to him in the stands, Yuri is shaking with anticipation. He still doesn’t know what Otabek is planning, but he’d better go through with it. If he’s just teasing, Yuri’s going to kill him.

He shakes in his seat as Leo and Phichit skate, manages to exchange smiles with Guang Hong as they applaud, although he thinks his might be a little fixed and manic.

Then Otabek comes on the ice, and Yuri leans forward, clenching his fists.

The first half is beautiful, as it always is, but there’s nothing new, nothing to push the limits of what Otabek can do. If anything, it’s less challenging than it had been at the Grand Prix Final.

“He’s moved two of his quads to earlier in the programme,” Victor murmurs, sounding fascinated. “Is he going to make one of the triples in the second half an extra quad? That would bring him up to—”

“Five,” Yuri grates out. JJ does six, though he tends not to stack them at the end for the points. Five would push Otabek past JJ in the technical components, especially if he used his lutz late in the programme. Given Otabek hasn’t made an error yet and assuming the fucking judges recognise how compelling he is to watch, he’ll win this if he lands them all.

Into the second half—quad loop, flying camel spin, quad toe loop-triple axel combination—but it’s a triple-triple—what the _fuck_ , Beka, you've been landing that since you were fifteen? There’s only the choreographic sequence, the triple axel and the spins left. If he turns the axel into a quad—a toe loop or a salchow, his strong jumps—he’ll beat anything JJ can do. If he doesn’t, he can’t win this. 

“Has his stamina gone?” Victor murmurs. “He’s better than this.”

And then Yuri _knows_. Even before it happens, he _knows_. He’s got over four hundred videos of Otabek Altin skating stored on his computer at home and he’s watched all of them countless times. He _knows_ as Otabek comes out of the choreographic sequence and takes an easier entry than usual into the axel, pushing up into it with more force than Yuri’s even seen before.

He’s on his feet and screaming as Otabek soars, counting the spins with his heart in his throat.

One and half. Two and a half. Three and a half.

Four and a half.

He lands it, stays upright as he turns into the final spins, but Yuri sees the faint grimace that crosses his face.

The whole stadium is on their feet and roaring, but Yuri’s running.

Otabek Altin has just landed the first quadruple axel in competition ever. He's made himself unbeatable—made fucking history.

But he’s landed it badly enough that it hurt.

And so Yuri runs, hurtles down the steps towards the kiss and cry, relying on the rest of the world to get out of his way, his heart beating with the pulse of _landed it—landed it badly—landed it—landed it badly._

And then he’s there and Otabek’s coming off the ice, leaning on his coach, and all Yuri can do is scream his name.

Otabek looks at him, his face more open and bright with joy than Yuri’s ever seen it, and holds out his arms.

And, ablaze with fear and triumph and delight, Yuri hurls himself forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG, I was so excited to write this I actually stalled on it XD
> 
> Basically, this is all because of the way Yuri catches his breath when he sees Otabek's triple axel in Episode 11.


	6. +1 Otabek (the one who loves him back)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Otabek reacts.

Otabek comes off the ice to a wave of sound like he’s never heard before. He’s never been the one the audience roared for, but there are waves of sound beating down on him, and he cannot breathe.

He landed it. He landed it. He actually landed it.

His coach is crying. He thinks he might be crying himself. He can’t quite tell any more.

This is it. This is what he has worked for, what he left home and travelled the world for, what he yearned for. 

His knee won’t hold his weight, but nothing hurts right now. Nothing could.

Then he looks up, and there is Yuri Plisetsky, racing towards him in a flare of gold (it doesn’t matter where his Yuri finishes in any competition. Otabek will always see him as gold).

Otabek opens his arms, because this is the only thing his life is missing right now. Yuri crashes into him, grabbing him so hard he lifts Otabek off his feet. Then he rears back, tears streaming down his face, locks his fists in the front of Otabek’s costume and screams, every word louder than the last, “I love you so much! I love you so _fucking_ much, but if you have destroyed your knee on a shitty quadruple axel, _I will eat your soul without salt!_ ”

Dizzy and amazed, Otabek can only say, “I’d let you.”

Then he kisses Yuri and his world is complete. For a moment, he cannot hear the noise any more—the screams, the cheers, the thunder of his own heart.

But then Yuri Plisetsky kisses him back, and the whole world falls in on Otabek again, blazing and triumphant and beautiful.Yuri’s mouth is sweet and hot below his and Yuri is holding onto him so tightly that he’s no longer afraid that he’ll fly away on this whirlwind, and so Otabek kisses him and kisses him, because this is joy and love and the promise that the future will somehow be brighter still.

He hears the noise of the audience get louder, and then—somehow, impossibly—rise again and his coach is pulling at his shoulder and calling, “Otabek, your score! Your score!”

Yuri breaks the kiss, his mouth red and swollen, and then laughs, bright and wild, and says, fondly furious, “You broke my world record, you fucker.”

“Yes,” Otabek says, hanging onto him to stay upright, and only then turns to look. 

For a moment, the numbers don’t make sense. Then it hits him all over again.

He landed it. He landed in not just in practice but in competition.

He tries to take a step forward and lift his hands to acknowledge the applause, but his knee won’t do it, and Yuri throws an arm around his back before he falls, holding him up.

“I think I did fuck up my knee,” Otabek says in bewilderment.

“Are you even feeling pain right now?” Yuri screams at him, and Otabek just turns to smile at him, because surely the answer to that is obvious.

“Fuck,” Yuri says fervently. “Will someone get this man a medic! Please!”

“I’ve never heard you say that word before,” Otabek informs him dreamily.

“And I’ve never seen you do that thing with your mouth for so long, weirdo,” Yuri snaps back and seems to fall forward to kiss Otabek’s smile again. 

Otabek wants to stay here and keep kissing him _forever_. 

But his coach is trying to move him out of the kiss and cry and there are medics who want access to his knee and the announcers are calling for quiet so JJ can actually skate (Otabek doesn’t waste his time expressing remorse for that—Yuri will just laugh all the brighter).

He goes off to the side and lets them examine his knee, poking and prodding. Yuri snarls and sneers at them, Otabek’s own irate personal beloved thunderstorm. They declare it no more than a strain, put a brace on it anyway, and suggest, with the weary tone of those who have treated too many stupid skaters to count, that he sit out the medal ceremony.

Yuri makes outraged noises at that and Otabek just shakes his head quietly.

He leans on Yuri all the way to the edge of the ice. JJ and Phichit are both waiting there. Phichit hugs him, quick and hard, and JJ grips his shoulder and says, “Good man. Good man.”

Yuri relinquishes him reluctantly, and he makes it across the ice to the podium with his fellow skaters’ hands under his elbows, holding him up. 

The audience blur into bright streaks of colour, all noise and awe, but he can still see Yuri at the rink side, golden hair falling around his shoulders as he clings to the edge of the rink and grins like he’s the one who just conquered the world.

Phichit cries too, and JJ is unusually subdued, leaning in for the photos without a single boasting comment or challenging word. All he says in the end is, “I thought no one would ever do it. I couldn’t and I thought—”

“But Otabek did!” Phichit says, dancing a little on the podium, his smile as bright and easy as the sun despite the lines of tears gleaming silver on his cheeks. 

Otabek wants to say something, to explain how hard it was, how long he’s been trying, but all that comes out is, “I’ve landed it better in practice.”

For some reason that gives Phichit the giggles and even JJ smiles, although it’s a little twisted at the edges.

They pose for what feels like a thousand flashing camera bulbs, and he smiles and smiles until his cheeks ache more than his knee and the other two are both laughing at his face. They pretty much carry him back off the ice and there’s Yuri, waiting impatiently. Otabek falls against him again, smiles vaguely as Phichit raises his phone to take a picture and JJ says, “I’ll do it at the Worlds.”

“You can _try_ ,” Yuri says darkly, baring his teeth.

“Be nice,” Otabek says into the crook of his neck and Yuri huffs fondly.

They get scooped up then, shoved into a room backstage while the ISU officials try to find a bigger space for a press conference. Otabek shudders a little at that thought, despite the euphoria still rushing through him.

“They won’t care if you turn up naked and answer in mime,” Yuri says scornfully. “You landed a fucking quad axel. You can do anything you like.”

“Skip the press conference?” Otabek suggests hopefully.

“Yeah, except that. Let JJ and Phichit do the talking. They actually like it.” 

Otabek sighs and then smiles as Yuri slides onto his lap, swinging his leg up to avoid Otabek’s bad knee, and kisses him again. For someone so foul-mouthed and furious, his kisses are very sweet.

Eventually, Yuri draws back, although he doesn’t move from Otabek;s lap, just settles there as if it’s the only place in the world where he belongs (Otabek has no problem with that, if it’s true). “How long have you been planning that?”

“I first landed it in practice in August,” Otabek confesses. “I wasn’t sure I’d even do it today, though.”

Yuri nods, his eyes thoughtful and distant. He says, a little dreamily, “So it can be done.”

Otabek knows where that’s going to end and doesn’t care. He’ll always be the one who did it first.

His coach brings him his phone and ducks out again, looking amused. Otabek told him years ago that he was going to kiss Yuri Plisetsky one day. He hadn’t anticipated it would be like this.

His phone is dancing on the table, alive with notifications and missed calls. Yuri leans over to scoop it up and then holds it out. “Your family.”

Otabek takes that one, listens gravely to his parents’ joy and pride, aware of Yuri leaning in to listen too, of the way he frowns as he tries to understand. Then his sister comes on the line, demanding, “Is your Yuri there?”

“Of course,” Otabek says and Yuri smiles at him, sharp and bright.

“Put me on speakerphone!”

Otabek obeys and she switches to Russian to shriek, “Yuri! _Has_ he destroyed his knee?”

“No!” Yuri yells back from Otabek’s lap.

“Ears,” Otabek says, more in hope than expectation.

“Good, because I would have _brought you the salt!_ ” Ayana howls.

“What makes you think I would have waited that long!?”

Otabek loves them both so much. All the same, he wonders, “How did you—”

“You were sitting right by a camera, stupids,” Ayana informs him.

Oh. 

Ayana snaps, “Now hear me, Yuri Plisetsky, if you break my brother’s heart I will tell every single one of your stupid fans that you prefer dalmatians to tigers until they do nothing but throw their stupid splotchy underwear at your ugly head!”

“Ayana!” Otabek protests.

But Yuri howls back, “And I would wear it!” and the pair of them are both cackling with laughter.

Ayana says, when she can put a sentence together again, “Fine. Now I’m going to go back to trolling your stupid Angels. Take care of my brother!”

“Always,” Yuri says as she hangs up.

“I should never have introduced you to my family,” Otabek says sadly.

“Your family love me.”

“Yes,” Otabek agrees. “So do I.”

Yuri goes pink and then scarlet, blurts off, “My Grandpa thinks I’m leading you astray,” and then dives in to kiss Otabek again.

Then a wave of officials turn up with questions and demands and he has to let go of Yuri for a while. He answers all their questions conscientiously, lets them take his picture and help him draft a statement. And all the while he watches Yuri pace up and down the side of the room, his hands moving and the muscles in his legs tensing subtly as he walks through it. Otabek knows exactly what he’s doing. It’s been less than half an hour since he did the impossible, and Yuri’s already trying to work out how to do it _better_.

He can’t resent it. That is who Yuri is and Otabek loves him too dearly to ever be dismayed. Instead he waits until they have the room to themselves again and says, “Don’t try it without Yakov’s help. And not for the Worlds. It took me months.”

Yuri flushes but doesn’t deny it. Instead he swings back towards Otabek, cups his hands around Otabek’s face and says, half-promise, half-apology, “I _will_ do it.”

“I know,” Otabek says. “I look forward to it.”

Yuri lights up again, pink-cheeked and ambitious. He snatches another kiss, and says grandly, “If you teach me how to land that, I _will_ marry you.”

Otabek considers that gravely and then tells his beautiful, brilliant lover, “Fair enough. I accept.”

It’s not the first time he renders Yuri Plisetsky speechless and he’s sure it won’t be the last, but it’s the best so far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG. Despite being in and out of fandom since 2005, I've never written a 5+1 fic before. I now see the appeal XD
> 
> Thanks to all who commented along the way. This was a blast to write, even though I wasn't planning on that damn quad axel when I started it.
> 
> In case anyone was wondering, I've been walking around with 'I will eat your soul without salt' echoing in the back of my mind all week. People keep asking why I'm so happy and I have no answer I can actually give them.


End file.
